Welcome to SaaS thoughts

Whether you call it Software as a Service (SaaS), Managed Service Provider (MSP) or On-Demand Services, your organization uses the service running “in the cloud”. This blog will discuss these services, their benefits, drawbacks and operations. Are we biased? Yes. We believe that some services make sense for most organizations. Email security is one of those. However as Mark Twain said, “All generalizations are false, even this one.” Each Tuesday we will post information and questions about Software as a Service. Occasionally, we will have a "Guest Post" from either a consultant or vendor posting her/his thoughts on Managed Services generally as well as some degree of specificity based on her/his unique perspective. We encourage your insights, comments and feedback. Welcome.

Using a managed service or SaaS makes sense on a lot of levels and more organizations are realizing the benefits of managed services every year. For example, did you know that most .gov organizations use a SaaS for their email security and spam blocking? (I guess they have answered the “Security and Control” concerns to their satisfaction.) However, often the idea of using a managed service is not considered until a company has budget and staffing concerns. Then they are more open to looking at managed services.

Ensuring that an IT department and a company’s infrastructure achieves a greater ROI than the competition is paramount. Small to medium sized businesses can face the most difficulty in getting back the money they’ve put into their IT infrastructure. This is especially true of new or young companies (those still in start-up mode). Balancing the financial burdens of becoming up-to-date and staying there against the budget can place a great deal of strain on the IT department.

Many companies look to a MSP to help their IT department cope with the additional burdens that accompany implementing and maintaining the business’ information and communication technology assets. The reason for considering a managed service provider is simple: managed services are designed to alleviate the procurement, implementation and support pressures a modern IT manager or organization may face.

Is the company IT staff so busy with day to day alligators they have no time to drain the swamp? Consider a MSP to take on the break/fix and patch update work for the workstations while the IT staff moves in a new area of technology. Or do it the other way around. Or do both. Managed services allow the customer to choose the elements with which they require assistance or even to outsource their company’s entire IT function to a third party.

Today’s organizations realize that the right technology not only helps them to grow, but to also become more competitive and cost effective. When businesses encounter times where implementing new or improved technology is hampered by a lack of personnel — by either the IT department being over-stretched — organizations can turn to managed services to help relieve the burden.

With growing confidence in the security, reliability and effectiveness of managed services, subscription- based offerings are an increasingly viable option for organizations looking for the traditional benefits of outsourcing — savings in labor, training and maintenance savings — but without the loss of control over core network functions. With greater predictability of costs and considerably shorter delivery timeframes, it only makes sense.